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Top federal IT stories of 2013 provide few surprises

It always amazes me when I'm researching a story and find one that I wrote over
the summer or the spring
and have no recollection of ever having done that piece. It reminds me of how fast
things move in the federal
community and that I'm getting old.

Without a doubt, 2013 ranks as high on the list of interesting and newsworthy
years among the last 16 I've
covered in the federal community. We saw a government shutdown, a major
administration program fall on its
face and a host of smaller, but just as important developments from mobile to big
data to the first attempt at
IT and acquisition reform in a decade that will continue the government's
evolution.

I asked more than a dozen current and former federal officials for their top
choices of IT and acquisition
stories for 2013. The following is a list compiled based on all their answers.

HealthCare.gov - Without a doubt the management and technology failings of
the Affordable Care
Act portal received the most comments and votes from my panel of experts. Not
surprising, given the fact it
was the Obama administration's main legislative accomplishment over the last five
years and how much
attention it received across the country.

At the same time, many agency chief information officers, IT and acquisition
experts say it also spurred
better, more substantive discussions around IT and procurement reform. One agency
official said
HealthCare.gov demonstrated the importance of "getting IT right" as a major
success factor for policy
initiatives, and reinforcing what happens when you take technology implementation
for granted. Just this
week President Barack Obama met with private sector CEOs to discuss the
challenges around IT and
procurement. The White House's statement on the meeting: "The President made clear
his continued focus on
improving the way we deliver technology to maximize innovation, efficiency and
customer service, and
encouraged the CEOs to continue to share their ideas on how to do so."

Pay attention here, this is a precursor to the steps the administration and
Congress plan to take in the coming
months, especially now that the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) didn't
make it in the final version
of the Defense authorization bill, passed by the Senate Thursday. Several sources
say the most recent CIO
Council meeting featured a long discussion on where the administration needs to go
with IT and procurement
reform.

Leaks by Edward Snowden - Easily the second most mentioned story of 2013. And
my experts say this is
broader than just information leaks, but encompasses the entire debate over the
National Security Agency's
use of technology and the renewed focus on stopping or limiting the damage from
insider threats.

One executive said the government is actively fortifying its insider threat
protections as a result of Snowden-
related leaks. The President received recommendations earlier this week from a committee of experts
detailing 46
recommendations to improve the privacy and civil liberties of signal intelligence
collection. These changes
also will impact the federal contractor community, especially in the wake of the
shootings and tragedy at the
Navy Yard.

The idea of contractor support and security clearances have come under more
scrutiny and will continue into
2014, many experts say. In fact, the Defense Department announced earlier this
week at the Senate Homeland
Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing on protecting federal facilities
that it's testing a new
continuous monitoring approach to security clearances.

Stephen Lewis, the DoD's deputy director for Personnel, Industrial and
Physical Security Policy in the
Directorate of Security Policy and Oversight in the Office of Under Secretary of
Defense for Intelligence, told
committee members that the Pentagon established a "pilot on continuous evaluation,
which is going to look
at — do queries, automated queries of public and DOD records, to look for
issues of concern."

Additionally, several experts have said contractors are suffering from the
Snowden-effect worldwide as
foreign countries are hesitant to do business with them because of the NSA's
intrusions and capabilities. One
former federal executive said, "The combination of anti-contractor rhetoric
generated by the actions of these
individuals and a widely acknowledged need to review the entire security clearance
process, has led to a
series of studies and analyses that could either lead to smart, thoughtful change
or could adversely affect
how companies are allowed support the government in the future. In either case the
government's ability to
respond to national security threats could be hampered by an inability to access
key skills in a timely
manner."

Shutdown and ongoing budget debate - The impact on IT and acquisition was
clear from the beginning.
Agencies had to delay major projects and contracts. For example, the General
Services Administration
delayed solicitation responses to the huge OASIS multiple award contract for
professional services. The
Defense Intelligence Agency pushed back the $6 billion E-SITE contract industry
day, which delayed the
release of the request for proposals. Even the IRS had to delay tax season, in
part, so it could update systems
with new requirements from Congress. And a recent survey from Market Connections,
Inc. and Lohfeld
Consulting Group, Inc. found 31 percent of vendors say they saw their revenue
decline by more than 10
percent in 2013 because of sequestration and the shutdown, while 30 percent said
their revenue decrease by
less than 10 percent.

Associated with the budget crunch is the government's move to lowest-price,
technically acceptable
procurements, which also is wreaking havoc on the vendor community. Additionally,
the IT passback from the
Office of Management Budget, which usually comes right around Thanksgiving, is
delayed until after Jan. 1,
according to multiple government sources. This cuts down the time agencies have to
prepare to implement
the new IT and acquisition policies. With Congress passing a topline budget for
the next two years, makes
planning a little easier, some of the federal executives say they are hopeful for
some stability in their budget
situations. A New Year's resolution from Congress, maybe?

Mobility - Several CIOs and executives mentioned the progress agencies made in
not only moving away
from the traditional BlackBerry devices, but implementing the Digital Government
Strategy, using Application
Programming Interfaces (APIs) and taking advantage of virtualization to improve
how citizens consume
services through smartphones and tablet computers.

Lack of progress on cybersecurity from Congress - This is a story that
actually started in 2012, but the
situation got no better this year. One CIO said lawmakers' inability to find
common ground led to the White
House's cyber executive order. It was one of the few positive outcomes because of
the lack of action by the
Hill. At the same time, the administration worked most of the year to get agencies
set up to implement
continuous diagnostics and mitigation (CDM) as part of its move to dynamic and
away from static
cybersecurity. That will make 2014 a big year for cyber improvements. One CIO said
agencies "need better
ways to stay ahead of the bad guys and more training in because we are losing the
battle." The most obvious
examples of those battle wounds are the attacks and cyber problem at the Energy
and Veterans Affairs
departments that came to light this year.

Changing roles of CIOs - This could easily be tied to the HealthCare.gov and
FITARA conversation. But a
couple of executives made interesting points around the move by OMB to give CIOs
oversight over commodity
IT and the increased need for collaboration to around issues such as open
government, PortfolioStat 2.0 and
the second term management agenda. In fact, OMB earlier this year created
a new CXO Collaboration Team to help break down any artificial barriers. Add
to that the mandate to
seriously consider shared services, especially around financial management, and
the move to the cloud, CIOs'
role will continue to evolve. As an aside to the changing role of the CIO, the
poor reaction by the White House
to the HealthCare.gov debacle and not providing political cover for the Health and
Human Services and
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services CIOs and, what one source called the
"defenestration" of former
DHS CIO Richard Spires, didn't sit well with many senior technology
managers.

This story is a part of Jason Miller's Inside the Reporter's Notebook feature. Read more from this week's edition.